Usability

Status Putting together a proposal. MimiYin 15 May 2004

Goals

• Establish usability as a process that will run in parallel with design team efforts.
• Make usability a regular part of the design process as opposed to a discrete phases
• Create usability vetting process that will test our designs at every level:
  1. Structure, Workflow, Terminology (concepts)
  2. Interaction design
  3. Information design, Visual design
• Employ creative new methods with low implementation overhead
• Do many low-cost iterations of usability to learn how to formulate strong test plans and how to evaluate results

Possible methods

• [Level 1] Cognitive workflow test (not specific to any interface)
• [All levels] Design checklist
• [Levels 1,2] Paper prototype
• [Levels 2, 3] Working prototype

Candidates for testing The levels stated here are not meant to be comprehensive. They are the levels of primary interest for each testing candidate.

• [Level 1] Dashboard view
• [Level 1] Detail view
• [Level 1] Managing collections across: Collections manager, Sidebar, Detail view
• [Level 2] Entering text box
• [Level 2] Table widget
• [Level 3] Calendar

Testing ideas

• Cognitive workflow test: Set up 4-5 baskets. Ask subject to print out 50 items from their PIM. As them to perform triage with the following baskets:
  • Processing
  • Deferred
  • Processed
  • Need to file (optional: we should test once with this and once without and see if it helps or hinders)
• Paper prototype of the detail view, ask users to describe what they think they can do with the detail view based on the tools that are available to them